


New York State Laws & Regulations for Child Care

by Tieleen



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere on the Avengers kinkmeme, a prompt asked for all the Avengers raising a kid together. I've since lost the prompt link and I'm scared of wading in to try and find it among the four million comments, but at least I can still blame the anonymous prompter for thinking this was a good idea.</p><p>That kid being a five year old Scott Summers in a world with no X-Men, though, that part I can only blame myself and my tortured psyche for.</p><p>This story is really a series of ficlets; each can pretty much be read individually.</p><p> </p><p>"No," Tony says patiently. "Darcy can't be your favorite. That is not how it works."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"No," Tony says patiently. "Darcy can't be your favorite. That is not how it works."

On the other side of the lab table, Pepper laughs.

"But she is," Scott says, confused and starting to shade towards defiant. Tony Stark and children, Pepper thinks, whose idea was this again?

"Face it, Tony," she says, reaching over to smooth Scott's bangs down. Scott grins at her. "You brought this on yourself."

"You like the big guy," Tony says, ignoring her. Pepper assumes he means Thor; Scott has only ever met the Hulk twice, when the house was under direct attack, and even those times it wasn't anywhere near close enough for interaction. If any of them -- especially Bruce -- has anything to say about it, that's never going to change.

Tony reaches over to poke Scott on the nose. "More importantly, you like _me_."

Scott's mood is always a bit hard to identify behind the glasses (or maybe all children are hard to read, she doesn't have that much experience), but Pepper suspects he's done with this conversation. "But Darcy's my _favorite_. You said who's my _favorite_."

Tony pretends he isn't pouting. Pepper makes a mental note: instruct JARVIS to put the kibosh on any and all attempts to build a child-sized bribery hovercraft.

"Tell you what," she says. "Who wants ice cream?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Not a chance," Steve says, firm.

Thor frowns. "Our diminutive charge does make a compelling argument, friend Steve."

"No, he doesn't," Steve says, just as Scott protests, "I'm not dim'utive."

"That's what you miss when you spend so much time away," Tony puts in helpfully. "Littleness' not cool anymore. Scott's a grown up now."

Scott gives them both the derisive stare five year olds so excel at. (It's definitely a wide-spread phenomenon; Steve's a veteran of many a city park, he knows these things. He didn't spend nearly enough time with children before the war to be sure, but he's willing to bet anything that they didn't use to be so freaking judgmental.)

Steve tries not to feel a little superior about not being included in that look. That would be ridiculous.

"I'm not a _grown up_ ," Scott says. "I'm just not a _baby_."

Steve manfully, and with the ease of long practice, refrains from picking him up and squeezing him. _Cute_ is also on the list of words that Scott's not so happy with at the moment.

Steve's mostly good with five, the conversations are better than ever (though he wishes that so many of them weren't about Dora), but he does miss being allowed to call his kid 'adorable'. He's mostly making do with 'swell' for now.

"Short stuff's right, obviously," Tony says, and either that one's still off the list or Scott doesn't have time to evaluate it before he barrels on: "Getting back to the flying part, if you ask me --"

"Nobody does, Tony," Natasha says, reassuringly, turning a page in her newspaper.

Clint hums agreement and puts Scott's orange juice on the table, ruffling his hair before heading back to the counter. "Really. Nobody."

"This," Tony informs Scott, "is called bullying. And it is _very very bad_."

Steve sighs. "There's a reason you're not allowed to take Scott flying anymore, Tony."

"Yes," Tony agrees, "and that reason is also called bullying."

Thor makes a rumbly, skeptical noise. "If my recollection does not mislead me," he points out, "the reason for our unanimous vote on the matter arose from the incident of Scott being dangled by his ankles over the Hudson River."

"That was so awesome," Scott says.

"No," Steve says. "No, it wasn't."

"You forgot the 'going thirty miles per hour' part," Clint adds. "Stark, what did you do to the toaster?"

"...Oh, right," Tony says. "Me and Scott are building a thing."

"You're a billionaire," Clint says, moving off to root through the fridge. "How come you can never get spare parts without ruining my breakfast?"

Tony waves him off. "I'll build a better one later."

Steve is about to go back to the issue at hand when Scott beats him to the punch.

"I don't need the harness," he says, apparently under the impression that enough conviction will make it fact.

"Yeah, buddy," Steve says. "You really do."

Scott frowns at him. "Mjolnir won't let me fall."

"Nor would I, small friend," Thor says. "My apologies: excellently-sized friend."

"I think we'll all feel better if you wear your harness anyway," Steve says. Natasha lowers the top of her newspaper enough to nod.

"Oh yeah," Clint says. "Don't you want us to be happy, kiddo?"

"But _I_ won't be happy," Scott points out, with the kind of devastating logic only a child raised by a committee of wiseasses can master. 

Steve doesn't mind; between him, Clint and Natasha, the ground-dwellers are enough of a voting bloc. They don't even need Bruce, which is good -- besides still being in bed after some all-night scientific breakthrough Steve doesn't understand and Tony has turned his nose up at, Bruce's dedication to being so laid-back he's nearly horizontal makes him a pretty bad bet in the overcautious parent game.

It's nice how his idea of 'overcautious' is 'not letting your five year old go 1,500 feet up in the air in a lightning storm _without a harness_ ', these days. Sometimes Steve suspects he needs to reevaluate his life a little.

"You could always skip the flying," Natasha says, because one of the many reasons Steve loves Natasha is that she never minds being the bad cop. "If it makes you unhappy."

Scott clearly has no intention of accepting this stunning bit of logic, but that's okay, too. Mostly because Steve is helping with a SHIELD seminar all day today, and it's Clint who'll have to deal with it.


	3. Chapter 3

"Hey," Clint says. "Can I have some of your hot dog?"

Scott doesn't seem to have heard him, too busy staring down with rapt attention. Clint grins to himself and inches his hand over, making every show of someone about to take over the untouched bun and declare possession being nine tenths of the law.

He's about three quarters of the way when Scott swipes his hand down in a clean arc, never looking away from the going-ons down below, the side of his palm hitting Clint's wrist at what feels like full force. It's little-kid strength, and little-kid speed, and Clint was mostly expecting it, but he wasn't really expecting the half-expert twist at the end; next time he might decide to choose a pain-free life over letting Scott score a hit.

"...Good one," he says, actually having to grit his teeth a little against the flare of pain. That particular extra pop is Natasha's specialty, and you'd think he'd be used to it, after all these years. He doesn't think Scott's had the muscle control for it until pretty recently, though; he can't remember that ever being a thing before. A pain-free life is probably going to start looking pretty tempting very quickly.

On the other hand… On the other hand, there are four people in the world Scott's allowed and pretty much required not to hold back against sometimes, because if there's one thing they've always been clear on -- some of them, at least -- it's that he needs to be able to defend himself as soon as humanly possible. Or superhumanly possible, really. Scott's a kid raised by the Avengers, and much more than that, he's a kid a lot of people would love to get their hands on.

Clint was never planning on a pain-free life, anyway; this is a small price to pay. Maybe they just need to set up some time limits on when no-holds-barred is okay.

And, anyway, if he's being honest, he's more than a little pleased at this small success, besides any practical considerations. So he's proud of getting beat up by a five year old, sue him.

Beside him, Scott grins to himself a little and takes a decisive bite from his hot dog. His focus still hasn't shifted an inch. Clint is pretty sure he's been stuck like that for the last half hour.

He has to admit he's a little pleased about that part, too.

"Which bit's your favorite?" he says, resting his elbow on the groove between the seat backs behind them, his palm light on the back of Scott's head.

Through the glasses he can see Scott's eyes actually swivel over to him this time, his head barely moving along so that he can train them right back on the bottom of the stadium ever more quickly. In the voice of a brand-new fanatic at the height of his zeal, he breathes, " _All of them."_

Clint can feel the grin stealing over his face, just a little, lifting one corner of his mouth without conscious choice, his fingers curling in Scott's hair in the barest shade of a hug. He looks around the crowd of wide-eyed children, their wide-eyed-to-resigned-to-texting parents, the colorful dome and the freely swinging trapeze as the acrobats take their bows down below; the familiar smell in the air, the one he'll always recognize without thought.

"Good," he says. "That's good. I think they're bringing the elephant out now. I've always liked that part."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that this circus is of course extremely humane in its animal use etc. No elephants were harmed in the making of this fic! I can't speak for Clint's old circus, though. Clearly there were any number of bad things happening there.


	4. Chapter 4

"There," Bruce says, zipping his bag closed. "That's better, right?"

Scott sniffs, looking down at the scrape on his arm. His eyes are still full of tears; he blinks and one spills down his cheek, reaching his chin where Bruce gets it with a careful thumb. "Still hurts."

"I know," Bruce says, ruefully. "That was a pretty bad fall. But it hurts less now, right?"

Scott scowls at him. "You're not _poking_ it now."

Bruce laughs a little, bending down to kiss his forehead, to lift him up off the bathroom counter and down onto the floor. Or that's the intention, anyway; being carried is pretty much a no-no for Scott at the moment, but the boy's uninjured arm comes up and tightens around his shoulders, and Bruce tries to change trajectory into picking him up completely and ends up having to lean against the counter so he won't cause another fall.

He adjusts his grip on Scott, who's got his head tucked into the side of Bruce's neck now, and doesn't seem to mind the flailing much. Bruce doesn't mind it much, either, really, because when dropping your kid is better than the wrong kind of adrenaline spike, you learn to get both your priorities and your instincts straight pretty early on. 

He stands there and enjoys the privilege, Scott's breathing steady against his shirt, arms little-kid warm around his neck. Scott may declare carrying to be a no-no for quite a while yet, and Bruce isn't as young as he used to be, and neither is Scott; in a few short years Steve and Thor will be the only ones able to pick him up even if he allows it -- and the Other Guy, of course, but, well.

"Had to do it, though," Bruce says after a while, readjusting his grip a little again. Really nowhere near as young as he used to be. "You remember what happens when you don't clean wounds?"

"Sepsis," Scott says, prompt but sleepy. It's been a pretty exciting little while. "Then your arm falls off."

"...Only in very extreme cases," Bruce says. He doesn't even know who to blame for that one. Hell, it might well be himself. "I promise your arm isn't going to fall off. Do you want a Batman band-aid?"


	5. Chapter 5

Several years ago, Tony had told Thor that he was 'a satellite dad'. He'd said it in that tone particular to Tony, where he was clearly joking but even more clearly -- even to Thor, who still has trouble comprehending humans and their emotional minutia -- not joking at all.

Thor had asked for clarification, and Tony had said, "Oh -- you know," which was how half his explanations usually started despite clear evidence. "It's a term for, well, parents who aren't around much."

Thor remembers feeling confused by this, and strangely apprehensive. Scott had been two then, and they'd had him for most of that time; it'd been four years since Thor had first come back to earth in a semi-permanent way. He was already finding out, slowly but surely, that humans could sometimes be harmed by things that were entirely mysterious to him.

But Scott had been more straight-forward then, his needs clear and his fragility easy to comprehend. This was one of the first times he'd come upon this idea, the idea that Scott too could be a riddle, and Thor had never been very good with those.

He doesn't remember what he'd replied; he only remembers Tony flicking a glance at him, staying a little long on his face, then turning back to whatever he'd been doing at the time. He remembers Tony saying, casual, "It's fine, I guess. He has plenty of us looking after him, right? No harm if some of us go away sometimes. Not like Clint and Natasha can always stick around, either."

Thor hadn't pressed for further explanation. He'd filed it away in his mind, that family being away might be harmful to human children -- not to humans in general, it seemed, but at least to the young. 

As far as he can remember, his childhood had been filled with his father journeying far, his mother's time taken up with the affairs of Asgard. He can't remember it being a hardship. But he'd been a child long, long ago; Tony's experience, more recent and fully human, is probably to be better trusted.

He'd asked Loki about it, once. It was one of those times when he'd been imprisoned on Asgard, but one of those times when his hatred seemed to be at an ebb, together with that strange, sharply fractured thing he'd been viewing the world and Thor through for so long. Thor had been visiting, and they'd been having conversations, careful ones that only sometimes ended in spit and venom.

He'd thought it was a safe enough topic. Loki had always loved his children; Thor had been certain that that part, at least, hadn't curdled into bitterness.

But of course he should have known better, because it was a question involving their parents, and as soon as he'd asked it Loki's eyes were full of shards again. "Hardship?" he'd said, sneer utterly familiar. "No, of course it'd been no hardship. What child would want their parents near them? It's so nice to see you take after your family."

Perhaps not a human thing, then. But that conversation could go no further, and Thor had been wary of asking again. 

He'd tried to spend the majority of his time on earth ever since, though, despite Tony's reassurance -- however much Tony had truly meant it. It's always him who mentions Thor's absences, after all; rare, off-hand remarks, but still present.

And he'd tried to spend more time with Scott when he was on earth. It's become easier the older he's gotten, Thor has to admit to himself, the more communicative and thinking he becomes. Love has always come easy to Thor, but perhaps this is something that's harder; attention, or closeness, or clear view of the person before him. Perhaps it's as easy as love itself to let one's vision lose its focus, familiarity and affection replacing true sight.

He's been wary of raising this question with Loki, too.

Scott is five now, and this is his first visit to Asgard. They'd been wandering around the city for three days now. Scott will graciously ride on Thor's shoulders when he's tired, but he staunchly refuses to be carried in his arms; Thor would be fine with this, but between the glasses and the high angle, he mostly misses seeing the look in Scott's eyes as he takes it all in. It's unexpectedly disappointing.

Before they'd left, Bruce had said, sounding surprised, "I guess your parents are really his only grandparents, aren't they? But, I mean, it's not like he's low on coddling." 

(Thor is unfamiliar with the idea behind this, but he has to agree that _coddling_ is an excellent term for what his parents have been doing ever since they got here.)

"That's true," Steve had said, like the idea was immensely strange. "They've never seen him before, have they?"

Thor had shaken his head; more seemed to be required, but he'd long given up on trying to make clear to humans what time was to his people. Even when they nodded understanding they never really seemed to see. Maybe that was part of the absence problem, too; Scott is a human child in that as well, and entirely mortal.

Scott's taken to the coddling with completely unsurprising ease. He'd liked them all so far, all of Thor's nearest and dearest: Odin and Frigga, Sif and the Warriors Three. He seems exceedingly fascinated with Fandral's hair, as well as a fascination with Hogun's entire being that Thor is starting to feel a little jealous of.

(Bruce had said, once, that children take their parents for granted, and that this is the point of parents -- he'd said it to Tony, Thor thinks, in the middle of some debate about Lady Darcy and something called the dark arts. But he hadn't sounded all that certain, and Thor is perfectly willing to admit he'd like the same regard Hogun apparently warrants.)

This is their third and final day. A longer stay had been vetoed by half the Avengers, and they'd clearly been right; Scott has been cheerful and absorbed all through, so far, but bedtime last night had brought tears and homesickness. Thor had been near ready to take him back or go and bring one of the others by the time Scott had finally fallen asleep. He'd woken up good as new that morning, but yes, Thor is glad he didn't press for a longer visit.

Clearly it's time, then.

The building is beautiful, as is every building in Asgard. Scott's head tilts back as they pass through the decorated archway, his expression visible for once, taking in another part of Thor's glittering city.

The guards nod to them, and Thor smiles back, stops to exchange a word. But Scott is pulling on his hand, impatient and curious. Thor's preparations for this moment had been meant as damage control, but their effects have clearly gone a little further.

He lets himself be pulled, allows the guard to bypass the lock, nudges Scott a little back behind him as the door slides open.

"Loki," he says, forces himself to swallow the _Odinson_ the familiar formal pattern requires. This is not the time for the inevitable explosion. "Allow me to introduce your nephew --"

And he stumbles, because though he'd prepared them both, this is Loki and his unpredictability is utterly predictable on some things. Perhaps this was a mistake; however physically safe Scott is with the force screen separating them from his uncle, Thor knows best of anyone how much damage this man can do with words alone.

But Loki doesn't yell, nor protest, and doesn't wait for Thor to recover and continue. He smiles, instead, smiles down to Scott standing just behind Thor's knee; a clear, sweet smile that hasn't been turned on Thor himself for years now, a smile Thor misses suddenly even more than he knew he did. 

"Hello," he says, and his voice is clear too, his eyes, even the way he carries himself, so like the man Thor used to know, like the boy he'd grown up with in a time beyond recollection. "Well met. What's your name?"

Scott edges forward, cautious and shy, now that they're actually inside. His left hand is clutching Thor's trousers in a firm grip, and his right hand rises a bit and then falls to his side. Thor had watched him solemnly shake hands with enough people to see the aborted gesture of long-ingrained manners there.

"Scott," he says, near-silent but clear, "it's nice to meet you." And Thor's brother smiles more and drags a chair closer to the force screen, sits and says, "That's a nice name. Do you like Asgard?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why not?" Tony says. He tries the poking again, looking pleased when nothing fights back this time. "I learned... three languages from nannies, I think. No, four, but one I mostly just knew how to curse in."
> 
> Steve watches Scott turn this new and exciting facet of nannies over in his mind.

Growing up, some of the kids Steve and Bucky played with had parents who spoke some language other than English; Italian, mostly, though there'd been a few others as well. 

Some of those kids had leaned the language growing up, but some of them never learned more than a handful of words, and Steve remembers irritated stories about parents taking advantage of that to have secret conversations right over their kids' heads.

He's pretty sure, however, this isn't how that's supposed to go.

"Morgen gehen wir in den Park," Scott says.

"English, please," Steve says, flicking a finger at his shoulder gently.

"Yes, English, please," Tony says, not looking up from the device he's fiddling with. "Your accent's terrible."

"I don't _have_ an accent," Scott says, like that's simultaneously the most ridiculous and most offensive thing Tony has ever said to him. Steve's had to hold himself back more than once from trying to bar Tony from parenting privileges; he really doubts that's the case.

"Yes, that might be the problem," Tony says, poking at something that sparks at him angrily. "Damn."

"There's only one place he could have learned that accent, Tony," Steve points out. He'd lost the 'damn' battle a long time ago.

Tony actually looks up at that, which might be a mistake; something else sparks and sizzles. "Ow! What are you talking about, I have a great accent. This is clearly Natasha's fault."

"Tasha doesn't talk German," Scott says sadly. He leans in to look closer; his red-tinged safety goggles reflect the shower of sparks that comes up, perfectly timed for extra heart attack. Steve can't stop himself from reaching out to pull him back, even though he's clearly outside the danger radius -- but Tony's already there, leaning far too close himself to block Scott from any possibility of danger.

Steve's effectively distracted from the conversation while his heart rate tries to go back to normal. He stands up to lay his hand on Tony's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Peachy keen," Tony says, which might be Steve mockery or just Tony being Tony. He straightens, giving Steve a brief grin before going back to his... whatever. "Of course she knows German, I've heard her use it --"

"She doesn't like German," Scott says. "If I talk German she talks Italian back. She says it goes better."

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it again. Now that the non-danger is over and he's back to processing things -- well. He'd thought that was Dutch, actually. 

But even aside from the fact of seventy years gone without him noticing, he knows it's absurd to feel like there's something a little off about a tiny American kid speaking German.

"She's probably right about that," Tony says. "Fine, you know what, maybe it is my fault. Doesn't really matter, right, nobody speaks German anyway. Except for people who build fantastic engines. Maybe we should get you a nanny with a good accent."

"No," Scott says, immediately. Scott's been off nannies ever since he started kindergarten; Steve suspects part of his vehement refusal to go back to having one comes from realizing how much more he can get away with in the general chaos of the tower, now that there isn't one adult around whose job is to keep track of him at all times. 

Or maybe he just likes being a normal kid, in which case Steve hopes he never finds out that two of the teachers at his kindergarten are part-time superheroes employed by Stark Industries, who carry three panic buttons and a satellite Starkphone on their person at all times.

"Why not?" Tony says. He tries the poking again, looking pleased when nothing fights back this time. "I learned... three languages from nannies, I think. No, four, but one I mostly just knew how to curse in."

Steve watches Scott turn this new and exciting facet of nannies over in his mind.

"I know languages," Scott says, finally. "Lots of languages."

It's true; as far as Steve knows, Scott doesn't have complete command over anything other than English and Spanish, but he has a decent vocabulary in at least three others and a smattering of words in maybe five more, which he seems to use completely interchangeably. Including German, apparently. It's pretty awesome, even if it leaves some monolingual people feeling a bit left out sometimes. 

(Steve considers himself decidedly monolingual. He knows a few words in a few languages too, from his old neighborhood and from the war, but both of those gave him a vocabulary that's largely unusable, especially around Scott.)

"Scary lot," Tony agrees. "Just not the accents, apparently."

"His French accent sounds okay to me," Steve says, and Tony winces and then tries to hide it.

"No, no," he says, looking up and pointing his screwdriver at Scott. "You are an awesome kid who's much cooler than I was at your age, and I take full responsibility for the accents. You should only listen to Tasha from now on. Whatever else I can say about her, her accent's probably always perfect."

"Tasha doesn't know everything," Scott points out.

"Truer words," Tony mutters, turning back to fiddling. "But she knows a lot of them, right? And she knows Arabic, I don't know Arabic. And, let's see, Punjabi, Bruce's the only one who knows that anyway. Although Bruce probably has a horrible accent too, don't listen to him either. And Swedish -- you can listen to me on Swedish, no one knows how to pronounce Swedish right. That includes Swedish people, don't let anybody tell you different."

Scott, a bright kid raised by a bunch of suspicious people -- and more importantly, by Tony Stark and Clint Barton -- looks pretty dubious about this statement. Which reminds Steve: "Doesn't Clint know some Japanese?"

"Don't listen to Barton either," Tony instructs Scott. "Never, ever listen to Barton. I'm sure I've told you that before."

Scott wisely decides the conversation has passed any stage where trying to parse it is worth his effort. "Can you make it do sparks again?"

"Yes," Tony says, "self-targeting arrows," but before Steve can protest he's barreled on to join Scott on his new line of thought: "And I can make this do sparks again too, but that's really the opposite of what we're going for here."

Scott leans forward to look more closely again. Steve allows himself one loose hand on the back of his shirt collar, just in case. "Why?"

"It's a little complicated," Tony says, "But basically, this is something that'll do half of Bruce's work for him, so you'll see him at lunch a little more often."

Scott weighs between excitement and Bruce. Bruce seems to win, but, Steve's pretty sure, just barely. "You'll come too?"

"...Sure," Tony says, only a brief hesitation, probably too short for Scott to notice. "Sure, yes, of course, I've pretty much sucked this week, haven't I? Thanks for coming to visit, by the way."

He looks up at Steve on this, almost involuntarily, maybe – probably completely involuntarily, Steve realizes, as the contraption that'll get Bruce to lunch makes an ominous crackling sound and some considerably more impressive electrical sparks show up. 

Scott's already leaned back, but Steve hauls him a few more feet away just in case, even as Scott bounces against him and yells "Cool!" And Tony sighs, "Aw, crap."

"…You're welcome," Steve sighs back. "Wouldn't miss the show." 

Tony scowls at him, but it shifts into a sheepish kind of amusement when Scott giggles in delight, attention fixed on the still-sparking device.

"Yeah, we're going to have to go over workshop safety rules again," Tony says, poking at it cautiously and doing something that makes the light display die down. "Seriously, kiddo, there's nothing funny about science going wrong."

Steve looks around. The New Improved Personality-Free Workshop Safety Robot is standing in a corner, powered down, because the Personality-Free facet apparently gets on Tony's nerves enough that the robot's services are considered unnecessary if there's at least one unoccupied adult in the workshop with Scott. 

The New Improved Personality-Free Workshop Safety Robot had been built when Tony realized Dummy and Butterfingers together were perfectly effective in keeping Scott safe, but not so effective at letting him do anything other than stand very still in one spot, which Scott had some very clear opinions about. Tony doesn't, apparently, have any idea about how to build a robot with only a little bit of personality instead. Possibly the idea has never occurred to him.

"You did want him to be engineering-oriented," Steve says, turning back to where Tony is now scowling again, this time at his workbench and the newly inert object on top of it.

"That's true," Tony says. "Bruce never gets sparks. Well, almost never. The whole Hulk-making thing possibly involved some." 

Scott tilts his head. "Is Bruce still going to come to lunch?"

"Maybe not today," Steve says, amused. But Tony's expression is turning complicated again, and Scott's own expression is more than a little disappointed, and so Steve doesn't offer any opinions when Tony says, "Yes, sure, of course he is; everybody's coming to lunch today."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~_Morgen gehen wir zum park_ : Tomorrow we're going to the park. According to Babylon, at least. Translating it back to English gives about the right sentence, which fills me with hope, but if you know better, please feel free to tell me.~~ Now changed a bit, with many thanks to Tussilago_Farfara!
> 
>  
> 
> In another prompt on the kinkmeme, someone mentioned that Tony's supposed to know a pretty high number of languages, and Natasha's supposed to know at least five. So, this.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's half-listening, enough to ask questions and hmm at the appropriate places and remember every detail, one of those ways a life of undercover work has apparently prepared her for dealing with preschoolers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have some hope of going back to this universe and writing, say, the actual story of how Scott ended up with the Avengers, or maybe the tragic tale of the War of What Do You Feed Children, Anyway. So there's some chance I'll add more chapters at some point, but for now I'm considering it finished, rather than Eternal WIP.

Teaching very young children the basics of fighting can be a fairly complicated idea. This is especially true if you want them to be capable of real fighting, if you're in a hurry, if you have no available children their own age for them to pair up with -- if you need them to be ready to fight people who are nowhere near their own age, as quickly as possible.

Natasha knows a great many of the ways of carrying out this idea, give or take the lack of other children being trained on the same level. She knows enough that the part that trips her up, again and again, is not doing everything she knows, not pushing as fast as fear would have her do. Scott has to be safe, but Scott has to be more than safe, too, and that balance was complicated enough when she was only trying to execute it on herself. 

"I like the house," she says. "That's a pretty color. Who do you think lives there?"

Scott frowns down at the paper, lower lip caught between his teeth. Natasha colors the sun on her own drawing a light yellow, waits for him to come to a conclusion.

"Raccoons," he decides, finally. "They work in a bank."

Like most of the other Avengers, the only children Natasha's known since she was one herself are Scott and the friends who come over, as well as the kids they meet on outings on those occasions when Scott is feeling friendly to strangers. It's enough basis for her to suspect that most kids with more boring families would never say that last part.

"Yeah?" she says. "Tell me about them," and he launches into a complicated story involving picnics and a journey she thinks she recognizes from one of Thor's child-retrofitted sagas, some rollerblades and a lost kitten. At some point there's a battle with bank robbers, too, and Natasha wonders absently if that's Scott's nod to being a regular kid, or if he simply takes it for granted that fighting criminals is a part of everyone's daily lives -- even banking raccoons.

She's half-listening, enough to ask questions and hmm at the appropriate places and remember every detail, one of those ways a life of undercover work has apparently prepared her for dealing with preschoolers. And she's thinking, too, plotting out the remainder of the day; she's got three more hours before leaving Scott with Bruce and heading off to a pre-mission briefing with Maria Hill. Two hours at the gym won't be too much, when they're done with drawing -- they did some work earlier in the morning, but that was straight-up training, and now they can change it up and play.

Scott's aim is better than any of them had dared to expect, amazing for his age, even with all the years of training and training disguised as games and straight-up games that still helped refine his skills. His hand-to-hand is fine, not bad (could be better, could always be better --)

His discipline is pretty amazing in its own way, for a child who grew up with all the Avengers plus collaterals doting on him, and his balance is steadily improving, his fine motor control, his speed, his strength, his understanding of his limits and his abilities, his child version of tactical thinking, his agility, his rope climbing, wall climbing, anything-he-might-need-to-escape-through climbing.

And four hours of total physical anything are ridiculously minuscule, not enough for anything, not for ability and not for safety. But Natasha nods and colors a tree, steals the silver crayon before Scott can capture her hand (but only just, and she was moving a little faster this time; better, better), takes a sip of her tea. She says, "What kind of sandwich was it?"

Scott believes in blueberry sandwiches with bacon and sticks of carrots and some pudding, because surely if you put all of his favorite things together you'll get something even more amazing. He takes the time to consider whether raccoons would like all the things he likes, decides they might prefer just the blueberries. He colors the sky light purple and the grass brown; the green crayon is always left sitting in the box, together with the red, with all the other unseen or unnecessary colors.

If they color for half an hour more they'll still get two hours, and she'll have time to shower and get to her meeting on time. If they color for a little more... well, this is a good story, and they can always make up the time some other day.

(Except that's not how it works; time wasted is time lost. Some days it's harder than others, to remember there are very few ways time can really be wasted, when you're five years old.)

Natasha draws some apples on her tree and offers a name for the ferret who lives in the next house over, a name Scott rejects out of hand while he colors the ferret's roof and adds three chimneys. One of them gets a yellow trail of smoke instead of the usual black. Natasha wonders idly which lab he's gotten his inspiration from this time.

She's a woman who can hand the child in her care to the one man who could be, in so many long-counted eventualities, the greatest danger to him, and trust him to do nothing worse than forget -- again -- that Scott likes his crusts off and his eggs sunny side up. She's a woman who can leave for two weeks for the other end of the globe and believe he'll be safe and whole when she comes back. Half an hour lost is nothing; the ball game that doesn't really improve Scott's coordination as effectively as more direct techniques would have, that's nothing. The threat hanging over him, of danger and loss and not being prepared, is as close to nothing as she'll ever be able to make it. 

Not very close, no. But enough for her to smile when Scott decides the ferret's name will be something long and convoluted she's fairly sure he won't be able to pronounce again, to try and smooth away the mush of pink crayon he's somehow got into his hair and then decide to leave it to Bruce and his bath duty, to draw a meticulous, careful family of cats sitting beside her painted house, which Scott will inevitably consider thoughtfully and then declare inferior to Steve's. There's so much for Scott to be other than safe, even when it's hard to remember. Just now it's not so hard to remember at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing this story, I realized Scott clearly has a 500-crayon kit cooked up by the Stark and Banner Research Team (with some help from some top SI minds) that includes all colors, textures and degrees of shininess that can be distinguished through a red-colored visor. No kid living in Stark Tower would end up with 'brown', 'brownish', and 'also sort of brown'. He'd end up with 'this is the color of the sky through the adult-sized replica visors they all periodically try on for a while, which Scott finds kind of weird, really. Specifically, it's the color of the sky through a visor at exactly 5 pm in September. The next crayon over is for 6 pm.'
> 
> I like to think that, instead of this being an overlooked detail, Scott just likes the regular kind better.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to: the anonymous prompter for the idea, Cosmic and Nogah for brainstorming ideas for later parts, and an extra thanks/giant pointing finger to Nogah for being a horrible enabler and trying to convince me to name this Full House. Which, I mean, it was my idea, but she was supposed to tell me no.
> 
> Also, extra special thanks to Kael for child-related physics advice, and misguidedly enabling my entire existence.
> 
> Edited to add: now with more thank-you's! Lorienwillow and purple_spock both beta-read parts of this, bore with my slowness in, well, everything, and were wonderful. Cosmic's ideas sneakily came back and poked my brain and were indispensable, and her name should be garfitti'd across this story. And Kael apparently feels that everybody knows enabling my existence is Evil, so we'll strike that part, but I love her anyway; she was a huge help in this, and she didn't even like the Avengers until about three days ago.


End file.
